Neo-Proudhonian Mutualism.—Between Contr'archy and Guarantism.—The Multiplication of Free Forces is the True Contr'un.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

W. H. Van Ornum, Why Government at All?

It's been a project ten or so years in the making, so I'm very happy to finally have W. H. Van Ornum's Why Government at All? available in electronic form. It's a real indicator of how much easier this has all become that, although the version of this text that I so painstakingly scanned a decade ago has never emerged from the limbo of old Zip discs and the like, I was able to start from scratch and archive this 350+ page volume in a little over a week, while working on several other projects and conferencing with my students. Van Ornum is not one of the names that we remember particularly, but he was one of the more important anarchist voices in the pages of The Twentieth Century, and Why Government at All? deserves its place among the more ambitious works produced by anarchists in the U. S. There is a good deal here to disagree with, but that's to be expected. The anarchist tradition in the U. S. produced lots of articulate writers but very few extended treatments. The ones we have are treasures that ought to be preserved.